Before I comment on chapter four in the Routman text, I wanted to remark upon an interesting conversation I had with my teacher-friend, since I bounce many ideas off her in an effort to understand them better myself. I told her about Maturation Theory and she connected it to reading To Kill a Mockingbird. In the story, despite the fact that Scout gets scolded for being able to read so young, Atticus continues to read the newspaper with her, albeit on the "down-low." Never before had that made sense to my friend, and it brought to me a new understanding of such a perplexing theory.

Okay- chapter 7 in Routman. Admittedly, it's taking me forever to get through this chapter. There is so much about her arguements of phonics vs. whole language that make me question pretty much everything about my practice. As I've said, I teach fifth grade, so I don't do much phonics anyway. But I'm glad I know the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness, because I have many students who have no idea how to spell, and originally I thought it was phonemic awareness.

Because it has been easier to plan and more predictable to teach, I have been using the McGraw Hill reading program, and on top of that, teaching many skills in isolation. I thought I was doing okay, especially when it came back that most of my students were proficient on the ASK. That said, I have many students who don't converse with the text, who can't apply the comprehension skills I teach and worse yet, who hate to read. Routman writes on page 97,"What I and many middle and upper-grade teachers find is that most struggling readers can recognize and read words; their difficulty lies in understanding them." I see this ALL THE TIME! Even this morning in summer school, I had a student read a paragraph to me to hear how he pronounced the larger poly-syllabic words. One word he read was "established." He glided right through it beautifully. I then asked him what it meant- silence. Like a little turtle, he curled up in his shell. I walked him through how to use context clues to find the meanings of unfamiliar words- still nothing. Needless to say, I am so grateful to be learning how to reorganize my practice to teach for understand.

I have many ideas about how to better my language arts curriculum, but my social studies instruction is very teacher-centered. We have so much rich content to get through, I don't know how to employ the same language arts techniques when we're focused on imparting information, not enhancing comprehension skills. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!